It was the little girl’s 12th birthday, the most important day of her life. It was the day she would get a name. She was terrified. Her mind was a whiplash: Help me. I’m stuck. Run. Run! I can do this. I practiced. Please don’t make me do this. I can do this! My name is Lilly. She tried to stay on her name but kept going back to fear. She had seen the pain before, had heard the screams. And everyone she knew and loved would be watching. She quivered, wrapped in a light, beige robe that offered no warmth from the cold church room, and tried to wiggle her left ankle. It responded to the thought. Her mind reeled back to hope, because even terrified, she could still do it. She had spent all last year practicing in anticipation for this.
Of course, so did every boy and girl when they turned 11, and many of them still died. She could too. Her mind went back to fear.
The priest entered the room. He too wore a beige robe, though his was streaked with maroon, the color of their religion. The color of the congealing.
It occurred to soon-to-be Lilly that that was also the color of blood. Her church was awash in it. The rooms were all a red-burnt clay, and the floor was speckled with reds and browns. And underneath the church, far below in the catacombs, was … but she did not want to think about that. She was already too afraid.
The priest put a hand on her shoulder, and her heart thudded so hard that even he arched an eyebrow. He wasn’t allowed to talk to her, but that gesture was enough. She was too afraid to succeed, her heart too ridged. It was a prison, and her ribcage was a prison, and if she couldn’t break out of her prison, she would die. And the worst part was, he wouldn’t care. Children had to die now and then. It was all part of the congealing.
He led her out, his hand always on her shoulder and he always one step behind. She couldn’t run. He was bigger and stronger than her, and even if she attacked him, kicked or bit, it wouldn’t matter. He had survived the congealing and no longer felt pain.
The church was full to bursting, but it was a solemn fullness, like it was its own prison. It was a domed building with stout wooden buttresses holding the ceiling high, and connecting them together was a single, white light. It was the eye of God. Adults folded robed hands and bowed heads while children looked on, their eyes absorbing every detail. They were taking mental notes, ones they’d bring to their own ceremonies when they turned 12. She passed by a boy with no name, and he wiggled his ears in solidarity. The nameless girl to his left stretched her nose. They were her best friends, and next year they would be in her spot, walking up the aisle towards the Congealing Alter.
Her feet walked heavy like her heart, the slaps the only sound in the church. Once the ceremony was over, she would walk without sound like the adults.
She approached the Alter. It was an alter, but it was also a shallow tank a little smaller than her bathtub at home and only a foot deep. Like the light, it was white, the purest white she had ever seen, purer than a piece of paper or even the moon. From this close, it was like looking at the sun. Her heart thudded in her chest, and the priest heard it, and she heard it, and everyone waited. The priest let go of her shoulder.
The whiplash in her head continued, now stuck between two distinct thoughts. My name is Lilly. I need to hide. She was willing to take either yet unable to reach far enough. She wrapped her arms around her body in a hug, perhaps the last one she would ever have. Streaks of burnt shale circled her, all silent, all without compassion. Would that be her next year? An adult with folded arms and eyes incapable of crying? Would she have a daughter and not name her? She shivered, and the priest watched, his face stern, his eyes brown pools. No one spoke. Everyone heard her heart. It was the hardest part of the body, and hers was especially loud. They knew, and she knew, and she had practiced but it wouldn’t matter anymore, not when it needed to most.
She shifted her arms to her sides.
“So it begins,” The priest said, and the congregation repeated the words. It was the beginning of a prayer, the only prayer any of them ever needed to know because it was the only prayer God responded to.
She sat in the alter and stretched her legs to the end, confined on all sides by white crystal. She shivered. It was cold, colder than how she practiced. She would fill her tub with ice and watch until it was almost all melted before lying down, but this was worse. This was frostbite. This was frozen with fear. Her feet pushed against the tub and stuck in place, right on top of the small drain that led to the catacombs.
The priest placed his hand on her head and finished his prayer. She had missed it. No! He pushed her down. Her eyes pleaded while her mouth didn’t move. She didn’t hear, and he knew, but neither could say anything. It might not work if someone spoke out of turn.
The church was different from the Congealing Alter. The wooden buttresses that had always seemed so strong and safe now looked like spider legs, and in the middle was that light, the spider’s blinding face. It hurt, and it was God, and it was a spider, and it knew she wasn’t holy. It stood over her, trapping her in its brown web of dried blood and old clay.
Faces looked down on her, first the priest and then her parents. No one smiled. They were adults, and this was their ceremony. The little girl begged for something, but the priest’s face was stone, and so was her father’s. He wouldn’t love her until after the ceremony was over, and even then, he only had a little love to give. She turned to her mother, her heart desperate for any kind of sign, and saw the glint of tears behind her mother’s eyes. She cares.
The little girl wiggled her nose at her mother and was relieved when her flesh responded.
The priest brought forth a metal grate, just wide enough to cover the Alter. It was a prison door, one with four vertical bars and no horizontal ones. The left and right gaps were thinner than the one in the middle, but not by much. It’s not a sacrament if it’s easy. Her father had told her that once. The priest let the door swing down, turning the Alter into its own cage. The bars rested against the girl’s face. They were cold. She couldn’t tilt her head to the left or right, but she heard her parents lock the grate in place, the clicks the only sound in the church. Her father handed his key to the priest first; it was long and black, the kind of key a lord would carry to unlock a very important room. Her mother knelt and placed her key in the girl’s mouth. It was shiny silver and tiny, the kind used to lock a diary or a locket. It tasted like warm secrets. The girl’s nose poked out the bars. She wiggled it again. The priest stepped back, and so did her parents, and they waited for the light to flicker. Once it did, the ceremony would begin and she would have 24 minutes to escape.
When she practiced, she could do it in six.
The girl tried to calm her heart, tried to become one with her body, to wiggle her shoulders and the backs of her knees. She tried to jiggle her elbows and her liver. About half responded to her thoughts, the easy pieces like her limbs, though her liver remained stationary. She tried to jiggle her heart, but it was beating too fast. She told herself that that was okay, that once she started everything would ooze into place like always, but the spider blinked all hope away.
I’m going to die. I’m 12, and I’m going to die, and no one will care.
Liquids flowed below her, rushing through long pipes underneath the church like an underground rainstorm. It thundered in her mind, louder than her heart, and she didn’t know what to do. Everyone knew about the liquids, but no one had ever told her they made noise. She only practiced in silence.
In panic, she slammed her eyes shut and pressed her face against the bars. She tried to concentrate, and her face respond to her will. Her nose elongated until it was as thin as a pencil; her cheeks molded together and reached for freedom. Her skin became the consistency of ground meat. The bars were smooth, polished just like the Alter, but they were tight. Her cheeks poked between them, but her teeth remained solid. She pushed anyways and tasted blood. It was solid, too solid to go through. She lay her head back down and watched the spider watching her. Her body returned to normal. Below, the liquids ran through their maze, racing to eat her.
Her heart continued to thud in its ribcage, harder than the bars.
Again.
She pressed her face against the bars and pushed. Like before, her face elongated, became ooze, and she pushed. Her teeth went through, and now the pressure was at her eyes. She had two, and God had one, but God was a spider and her vision wavered. Tears rolled down her malformed face, not running down the channels of her nose but into her ears. Her eyes bulged wide when she needed them narrow, and one of her molars became solid. Her heart would not stop beating. The blood pounded in her ears which were solid despite how easy they were to wiggle, and she couldn’t do it! She fell back against the Alter. Her solid tooth got caught against the bars and pulled free. Pain burned in her mouth and mixed with blood, but she didn’t scream.
She swallowed the tooth but kept the key in her cheek. The key was hers.
Dad would be proud if he knew. I won’t tell him, but he would be proud if he knew.
The girl wiggled her legs and turned them into jelly. She did the same to her hands and then her arms and shoulders. She wished she could go sideways, because the limbs were the easiest to control. They were the farthest parts away from the heart. But the Congealing was like giving birth: It worked best going head first, then shoulders, then chest. The kids that tried to go backwards only did so as a last resort, when the tub was filling with liquids and burning their feet. It never worked.
Time passed, hearts thudded, people watched. The girl laid in her prison that the adults called an Alter and looked at the face of God who wasn’t a God but a spider. Liquids rushed below her, getting louder in her ears. They were coming, the Congealing Fluid, but it wasn’t a sacrament but an acid. It would eat her, and no one would care. Children had to be dissolved for the religion to work.
Tears rolled down soon-to-be Lilly’s face, this time following the proper path. She only had 12 minutes left. There were no clocks, but she knew how much time had passed. Every kid got good at measuring time without the need of a clock, because every kid had to face this 24 minutes. If she survived and became an adult, then she would get to measure things in 60 minutes.
I can do it in six.
She pushed against the bars again, but this time her face wouldn’t turn to jelly. She was stuck, trapped. She thought of her two best friends, of the games they played at recess and their adventures through the dead forests at the edge of town, and tried again. Her face jiggled but only somewhat. She remembered the time they wandered the city hunting for treasure, digging through trash and dodging adults. They had wound up at a junkyard full of old wonders, big electric machines with screens that lit up when the sun was high enough to pierce the smoggy layer of clouds. She remembered stepping on a rusty piece of wire and thinking it was a pretty color. She remembered the tetanus shot she had to get after. That too had been a pretty color. Her face jiggled again, and she forced it against the bars. Her nose elongated and her cheeks followed. She continued to remember, and in remembering she relaxed. Her eyes bulged in the right direction and slipped through the bars. The bones around her face turned to noodles.
She thought of that one secret night, when they had all snuck out of their homes to wander the streets and whisper amongst themselves. The night was warm, the sky a fuzzy orange fog. Clouds shifted with the wind which was always roving, looking for leaves to blow, and now and then, black velvet pinpricked with stars poked through. Everything was big and wide and free.
Then they had found a small dog, too tired and skinny to bite them. Its eyes drooled into its matted fur the color of burnt coals, and it whimpered at their shadows. She remembered petting it, how its fur was slimy and coarse yet still comforting, how its tail shifted in a heavy wag. The nameless boy dug into his pockets and handed the dog some crackers. It ate, and it lay still and accepted their affection, but it knew it was going to die and so did they.
There was no point in naming it.
“Mark,” the boy said. “I want to be named Mark. It’s a strong name, right?”
Soon-to-be Lilly flushed with embarrassment, but nodded. It was a strong name. “I’m going to be Lilly. Like the flower.”
“You ain’t ever seen a lily flower,” Mark said. “Only dandelions.”
“So?”
“Well I think it’s a gorgeous name,” the other girl said. “Better than Mark.”
Mark huffed and stood as tall as he could, which at the time wasn’t very tall at all. “Is not!”
“Is too!”
“What about you?” Lilly asked. “What name do you want?”
The girl looked at her feet, which were without shoes and covered in calluses. Her toenails were filthy with grime. “Grace,” she said. “I think that’s a nice name.”
Mark opened his mouth to argue but decided against it. Even he had to concede that it was a nice name. Mark. Grace. Lilly.
But we never named the dog.
Soon-to-be Lilly’s ears pressed against the bars and turned to mush. She slid her head between them, her hair following behind, light and waving. Next came her neck, and then the tops of her shoulders. The bones were rigid, close to the heart and strong, but she remembered that night, and they bent to her will, becoming slime. She pushed with her elbows, oozing through the narrow bars, her skin reddening with strain and misplaced blood. Her body was no longer a body but a cold soup of parts. She was no longer a person.
The acid flowed below her.
I can do it in six.
The little girl tried to sit up, but the bars stopped at her chest. Her heart beat thunder, and the ribs around it were harder than the Alter. The eye of God glared from its spider body. She gasped, but already she was forming her lungs into not lungs, folding them piece by piece until they were as narrow as her fingers. Her heart roared. It didn’t want to shrink and shrivel, it didn’t want to become an un-heart. It was hers, and it was why she loved her family and her friends and that dog, even though they had never named it. It was why she wanted to be named Lilly.
The congregation watched her struggle, arms folded and heads bowed. No one spoke. It was a ceremony, the most important ceremony they had, and this was the most important part. They want my heart to die.
Soon-to-be Lilly choked. Acid pounded near, matching the beating of her heart, the rush of blood in her ears. She had four minutes left, and then it would be on her, dissolving her in front of everyone. She would become burnt red like the church, like dried blood. She would become a memory, but one easily forgotten for she had no name.
She struggled against the prison door, tried to force her heart through, but it was too big. It did not want to die.
Pain lapped at her feet. The little girl tried to scream but couldn’t, for she had no lungs. The acid was on her, filling up the Alter from the bottom. It burned her heals, turning the pink flesh into red goo. Tears poured down her face as she watched the adults watching her. No one made a move to help. Her father stared, but his eyes were distant, not looking at her but through her.
Soon-to-be Lilly tried to find her mother, but the pain and tears were blurring her vision until everyone became the same person, the same priest with a beige robe smothered in red clay. The acid splashed up her left foot, taking the pads of her toes and exposing the bone beneath. She tried to pull away but couldn’t. The bars were too tight, the Alter too needy of her warmth.
She was going to die.
“Lilly!” a voice shouted. Grace’s. “Lilly!”
“Lilly!” another voice roared. Mark’s. “Lilly you can do it!”
Above soon-to-be Lilly, the eye of God blinked.
I am loved, and I love, and that’s the truth they don’t want me to know.
The little girl wiggled what was left of her right foot, and though it was dissolving, it responded to her. She turned it to jelly and moved it away from the pain, leaving a trail of red snail slime. She did the same to her left foot. Her bowels came next, easy to manipulate because she knew what she must do. Her heart could not die. She needed to love, and the world needed to love. The adults were wrong.
Her body contorted into a gelatin shape, no longer resembling a person but a kind of monstrous blob. Yet she was more a person than anyone in the room. She heard Mark and Grace laugh, and she wanted to as well. Soon she would.
The acid filled the pool, slopping and splashing its way for her, but most of her was contorted through the bars now. All that was left was the small of her back and her heart. She was growing up from the Alter like a tree, but not a dead one. Her forest was strong and vibrant, and the color was not burnt red but lily.
“Heart,” she mouthed, and her heart slowed, ready to listen. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”
Little by little, she felt the organ that gave her life, pumped her blood and flooded her emotions with meaning, slow down. It was scared, and so was she, but deep down, they both knew they would be alright. It would only take a second, and then she could reform into a person, one that was whole and alive. One that her God could not damage.
Grace and Mark continued to yell encouragements, and soon the rest of the children were doing the same. The adults bristled at the noise, at the sacrilege, but the little girl saw. It was a half-hearted bristle, one that didn’t feel because they had long ago lost the ability to do so. Never again. Never again, never again, never again!
“Never again!” the girl screamed.
The eye of God went out.
Lilly slid through the bars.
Nonsense 